Death's grin vanished. "I noticed. Time for a new ride, maybe." No one called them "attractions" anymore -- all that old Orwellian Disneyspeak had been abolished. "They love the coaster and the free-fall. Thrill rides are always crowd-pleasers." Death Waits had worked at Disney for three years now, since the age of 16, and he had grown up coming to the park, one of the rare Orlando locals. Sammy had come to rely on him for what he thought of as insight into the "goth street." He never said that aloud, because he knew how much it sounded like "whatever you crazy kids are into these days." But this wasn't helpful. "I *know* that everyone likes thrill rides, but how the hell can you compete with the gypsy coasters?" They set up their coasters by the road and ran them until there was an injury serious enough to draw the law -- a week or two at best. You could order the DIY coaster kits from a number of suppliers across the US and Mexico, put them up with cranes and semi-skilled labor and wishful thinking, start taking tickets, and when the inevitable catastrophe ensued, you could be packed and on the lam in a couple hours. "Gypsy coasters? They suck. We've got theming. Our rides are *art*. That stuff is just *engineering*." Death Waits was a good kid, but he was a serious imbiber of the kool-aid. "Maybe try dance parties again?" They'd tried a string of all-night raves, but the fights, drugs, and sex were just too much for the upper management, no matter how much money they brought in. Sammy shook his head morosely. "I've told you that a company this size can't afford the risks from that sort of thing." A few more goths straggled in. They headed for the walk-through, which probably meant they planned to get high or make out, something he'd given up on trying to prevent. Anything to get the numbers up. He and the security staff had come to an understanding on this and no one was telling his boss or his colleagues. "I should just bulldoze the whole fucking thing and start over. What comes after goth, anyway? Are ravers back? Hippies? Punks? Chavs?" Death Waits was staring at him with round eyes. "You wouldn't really --" He waved at the kid. This was his whole life. "No, Death, no. We're not going to bulldoze this place. You've got a job for life here." It was a lie of such amazing callousness that Sammy felt a twinge of remorse while saying it. Those twinges didn't come often. But Death Waits looked a lot happier once the words were out of his mouth -- goths with big candy-apple cheeks were pretty unconvincing gloom-meisters.